jb… Mac Magazine

Sometimes I think I’d like a really great magazine, like The New Yorker, but for Mac geeks. A beautifully printed, monthly magazine with all the best news, tips, opinions, analysis, predictions, and howtos from the Mac community. I’m not looking for what Macworld used to be, I’m thinking more along the lines of The Atlantic. Something classy, something worthy of printing and keeping out in the living room under the coffee table. Something I’d look forward to reading cover to cover every month.

Of course, it would have the best of John Gruber for the month, something argumentative from Marco Arment, and maybe a bit of Mac history from Stephen Hackett. The tech news would be covered by Jim Dalrymple, Jason Snell, and Dan Moren. Shawn Blanc and Matt Gemmell would add some flavor to the mix, we’d get a taste of the future from Federico Viticci, and on the back page would be Dr. Drang’s script of the month. To be honest, I’d probably read that last page first, and then read the rest of it. Heck, Gruber could call the entire magazine Daring Fireball and color the entire front of the magazine gray with his star lightly embossed in a slightly darker gray and, well, it would be fantastic.

Perhaps it’s a bit silly to be dreaming of a magazine at the end of 2015, but it’s something that doesn’t exist that I wish did. If I wish it existed, I’m sure there must be others who would like it too. A physical, intentionally designed magazine with beautiful print, carefully chosen advertisements, and pages that felt good when you flipped them. Something that felt like it might be around in a hundred years, if you take care of it.

Of course, as far as I know none of these folks are interested in collaborating on such an endeavor. Each of them is building their own business, building membership programs and selling ads. I added up a few of my favorite sites membership programs to see what the monthly total would be:

Six Colors $6/mo

The Loop $3/mo

MacStories $5/mo

Relay.fm $5/mo

Shawn Blanc $4/mo

Matt Gemmell $4/mo

Brooks Review $4/mo

Total: $31/mo

For comparison, the New York Times sells for $35 per month for the “All Digital Access” package. You can subscribe to The New Yorker for less than five dollars per month, and subscribing to The Atlantic for a year equates to paying $2.50 per issue for ten issues. Food for thought.

Of course, I can’t end this dreamy article without mentioning Marco’s ill fated “The Magazine”. What I’m proposing and what The Magazine turned out to be aren’t really in the same ballpark, other than having some of our favorite characters involved in its creation. The Magazine was purposefully not a “tech” magazine, it was about writing. It was also not a printed magazine, it was a subscription digital magazine aimed at the iPad’s Newsstand app. What I’m proposing is an old fashioned printed magazine, about tech, with my personal favorite writers, superbly designed and excellently illustrated. It would be awesome.